Trying to Revive Gage & Tollner, a Landmark Brooklyn Restaurant

Three restaurateurs will start a crowdfunding campaign to restore the chop-and-oyster house to its former glory.

Gage & Tollner in better days. The landmarked interior still has its gas lamps and wall-length mirrors.CreditFred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Gage & Tollner, the long-suffering grande dame of New York restaurant landmarks, will get yet another chance to reclaim its dignity.

Three Brooklyn restaurateurs have teamed up to rescue the 19th-century space on Fulton Street in Downtown Brooklyn; Gage & Tollner closed in 2004 after 112 years there, but the building’s interior, designated a landmark, still has its original lamps and wall-length mirrors. Their aim is to return it to its former glory as a grand chop-and-oyster house.

The three will kick off their effort in a very 21st-century way, through a $600,000 capital campaign on Wefunder, a crowdfunding service that allows investors with limited money to offer equity for entrepreneurial projects. The campaign will begin at 9 a.m. on Monday.

“We realized we didn’t know 12 people who could give us $100,000 a piece,” said St. John Frizell, an owner of the Red Hook bar Fort Defiance. His partners are Sohui Kim and Ben Schneider, owners of the Good Fork, in Red Hook, and Insa, in the Gowanus area. “But we did know 600 who could give us $1,000 a piece.”

The small-time contributions will be treated as investments, which will be paid back with interest from the company’s revenue. The $600,000 represents one-third of what the team needs to get the old restaurant open and running. The team hopes the Wefunder campaign will lead to commitments from deep-pocketed equity investors.

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The Fulton Street space has done time as a TGI Fridays and an Arby’s.CreditJeenah Moon for The New York Times

“Wefunder as a company, they’re doing it to make money,” Mr. Schneider said. “They’re also doing it for a belief that it’s not fair that only really rich people can invest in things. It opens it up to a much more democratic way of citizens investing in businesses.”

In a city where powerhouse restaurant companies like the Major Food Group are called upon when a landmark like the Four Seasons needs an overhaul, the Brooklyn partners are aware they are not the rescue party one might expect for a famous name like Gage & Tollner.

“We are not high rollers,” Mr. Frizell said. “I’ll just come right out and say that. But we are community builders. We’ll see if we can do that here.”

Since closing, the Gage & Tollner space has done time as a TGI Fridays and an Arby’s.

The new partners plan to serve traditional fare, with possible dishes including Welsh rarebit and clams casino, as well as items introduced by Edna Lewis, the celebrated author and Southern cook who was the restaurant’s chef in the 1980s. Ms. Kim would be the new chef.

The second floor, which contains two faded private dining rooms, would become the Sunken Harbor Club, a tropical cocktail bar inspired by the private clubs of the late 19th century.